


The Death of a Gerbil

by alecmagnuslwb



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Fluff, Meet-Cute, i almost tagged it major character death for the gerbil just as a joke, literally and metaphorically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26045131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alecmagnuslwb/pseuds/alecmagnuslwb
Summary: Maia accidentally kills her roommate’s gerbil and rushes to the nearest pet store, but finds the girl at the counter to be the cutest thing in the store.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Maia Roberts
Kudos: 8





	The Death of a Gerbil

**Author's Note:**

> Writer’s Month day 22, prompt: Pet Shop AU
> 
> Please read the title of this to the tune of Death of a Bachelor by Panic! At the Disco.

Maia looks inside the gerbil cage in horror. Three days, all she had to do was keep her roommate’s gerbil alive for three days and she failed. The poor little brown and white guy is laying on his back feet up in the air, tiny tongue dangling from his mouth, dead as a damn doornail.

She knows what she should do, she should put him a nice shoebox, seal it up and find a lovely place to lay him to rest where she and Aline can bury him when she gets back tonight. However that isn’t what she does instead she’s immediately pulling up every picture Aline has posted on her Instagram of the little bugger and googling the nearest pet store to replace the dearly departed little Alexander Graham Ger-Bell.

She’s out the door seconds later hailing a cab instead of taking the subway to ensure she gets there with ample time to find an exact twin.

She throws the cabbie a nice tip and heads into Garroway Pet Supply in a rush.

The shop is small, rows labeled with detailed signs. Maia looks around a little frantically until she spots a row of glass cages a variety of furry little creatures running around in them. She stops at each one studying them closely until she finds the gerbil cage, inside a dozen or so gerbils’ scoot around happily the same way poor little Ger-Bell had been mere hours ago.

She gets out her phone flipping through the array of screenshots she’d taken to capture each angle of the former gerbil. She studies each one carefully, looking between the photos and every gerbil before her for the perfect match.

“Too big, too round, too red,” she says ruling out three of them right off the bat. A smaller brown gerbil is buried under some toys in the back and she stands on her tippy toes trying to get its attention so she can see beyond its little head.

“Can I help you?” a voice says to her right startling her. She jumps back from the glass cage a bit and meets the eyes of the prettiest girl she’s ever seen.

The red head smiles at her tilting her head in the direction of the gerbils.

“Looking for a new pet?” the woman, Clary as her nametag reads, asks next.

“Um, sort of,” Maia says looking from eyeing Clary up and down back to the gerbils. “I need a replacement.”

“Ah, we get that a lot. For a kid or a younger sibling?” Clary poses and Maia laughs. She understands the assumption, she recalls her own mother doing something similar when her parakeet dropped dead one day while she was at school. It’s safe to bet this shop doesn’t see a lot of adult women coming in to secretly replace the dead gerbils of their adult roommate.

“Um, sister,” she says which isn’t totally a lie she and Aline practically grew up together, they’ve been friends longer than she’s been able to read. The fact that Aline is 26 isn’t something this woman needs to know no matter how pretty she is.

“Hm, okay,” Clary says clearly not buying it, but putting on her best the customer is always right smile anyways. “May I?” she gestures to the phone in Maia’s hand.

Maia nods handing her the phone. Clary slides through the photos humming lightly as she goes, clearly in deep thought.

“Boy or girl?” she asks zooming in on one of the photos and studying it carefully.

“Boy,” Maia answers. “Alexander Graham Ger-Bell.”

Clary looks up and smiles scrunching up her nose.

“Cute name,” she says handing Maia back her phone.

“Yeah, Aline’s a bit of a history of inventions nerd,” Maia explains as Clary leans over to grab a stool and pulls it over to the cages. She steps up on it leaning in and picking up the pile of toys from the back revealing the gerbil Maia had been trying to see more closely.

She picks him up gingerly holding him in her hands.

“Now this little guy is missing a whisker permanently, but other than that he looks like an exact replica of your little inventor,” she says holding out the gerbil for Maia to take.

Maia holds out her hands taking the little guy from Clary, for a moment their fingers brush and the edge of Maia’s lips tilt up. Clary pushes her hair behind her ears shyly after she pulls back.

Their eyes meet and for a moment they just look at one another, until the gerbil starts squiggling around in Maia’s hands nipping lightly at her fingers and she remembers why she’s there.

Clary clears her throat, “Do you need anything else for him?”

Maia shakes her head following Clary up to the counter to check out.

“Just a box and a prayer she won’t figure it out,” Maia laughs as Clary pulls a box fromm under the counter and begins folding it together. She pushes it forward when she’s done putting a bit of bedding and some treats in the bottom and Maia sits the newly minted Alexander Graham Ger-Bell the second in it.

Clary rings her out asking questions about Maia’s ‘little sister’ that she artfully dodges. She hesitates when signing the store copy of her receipt and thinks what the hell she’s risking it all for a gerbil anyways why not shoot her shot with a pretty girl too. She adds her number at the bottom and the words call me with a little smiley face beside it.

“Good luck,” Clary says with a smile taking the receipt and waving as Maia rushes out the door eager to get back to the apartment before Aline.

She’s putting the former gerbil in a shoebox disposing of his body in the garden behind their building, the new replacement comfortably living upstairs, when her phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.

**_I almost missed your number on the receipt, which would have been a real shame_ ** **_😊_ **

Maia smiles stopping her digging for a moment to text Clary and save her number. By the time she’s done Aline is already back at the apartment and in ten short minutes she knows that it isn’t her gerbil in there.

She doesn’t talk to Maia for a week, but does decide to keep the new gerbil naming this one Kristen Ger-Bell, only forgiving her once she makes a small memorial stand and tiny headstone that she places in the garden where she disposed of Alexander Graham. But it’s all okay, because Clary keeps texting her and when Maia makes the mistake of inviting her in on their second date and discovers the truth about Maia’s gerbil replacement she only laughs at her for fifteen minutes, at least half less than what she expected.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [alecmagnuslwb](https://alecmagnuslwb.tumblr.com/)


End file.
